The London Sound Seminar offers an opportunity for research students and faculty in London to explore issues relating to the history and theory of all forms of sound-making and auditory culture.

Noise

Wednesday 1 February, 4.30-6.00 pm [Rm 113, 43 Gordon Square]
‘The Soundproof Study: Victorian Professional Identity and Urban noise’ in John M. Picker, Victorian Soundscapes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp.41–81 [also look at pp.15–16 from Ch.1]

Wednesday 15 February, 4.30-6.00 pm [Rm 113, 43 Gordon Square]
Emily Thompson, ‘Noise and Modern Culture, 1900–1933′, in The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), pp.115–168

Wednesday 29 February, 4.30-6.00 pm [Rm 114 – Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square – NOTE DIFFERENT ROOM].
‘The Noise of Almost Nothing’ – talk by Hillel Schwartz (author of Making Noise)

Wednesday 14th March, , 4.30-6.00 pm [Rm 113, 43 Gordon Square]
Friedrich Kittler, extracts from Gramophone, Film Typewriter and forthcoming chapter ‘The God of Ears’ (on Pink Floyd’s ‘Brain Damage’) [selections TBC]

To subscribe to the London Sound Seminar mailing list: from the email address you wish to subscribe with, send the following command within the body of the message to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk: SUBSCRIBE LONDONSOUNDSEMINAR Firstname Lastname

We will use the list for announcements of meetings and events, and it can be used for discussion too. To send an message to the list, simply email londonsoundseminar@jiscmail.ac.uk

Friday 27th January 7pm
BFI southbank gallery

A re-staging of Aura Satz’s  ‘Ventriloqua‘ performance with thereminist extraordinaire Lydia Kavina playing the electromagnetic waves of a pregnant body. Referencing ventriloquism, as in ‘belly-speaking’, the body becomes a musical instrument, an antenna, a medium, through which a pre-verbal, pre-vocal otherworldly voice is transmitted. Meanwhile, a flame alphabet visualizes the sounds in a secret fire-code using a Ruben’s tube.

Part of the Samsung Art+ prize at the BFI project space

Artist’s Series Organised by Parveen Adams

6.30-8.00 at the Architectural Association

Friday 27th January: Becky Beasley, ‘Feet and Hinges’

Friday 3rd February: Monika Sosnowska

Friday 2nd March: Anri Sala

Friday 9th March: Mary Kelly, ‘Dialogic Space’

The Apathy Complex

A six-week, multi-disciplinary course at Tate Modern
Saturdays 25 February – 31 March 2012
Led by Richard Martin and Lucy Scholes

In contemporary society, we are constantly urged to participate, to engage and to get involved. To be apathetic – about politics or culture – is regarded as irresponsible, indulgent and even dangerous. Such extortions are accompanied by widespread disaffection and feelings of social alienation. Yet, from Greek philosophers through nineteenth-century novelists to contemporary artists, apathy has held its own creative possibilities.

These competing ideas lie at the heart of the fascinating apathy complex that will be explored in this new six-week course. We’ll take a thoroughly multi-disciplinary approach, placing film, literature and critical theory alongside works by modern and contemporary artists represented in the Tate collection. We’ll also discuss how the exhibitions of Yayoi Kusama and Alighiero Boetti might contribute to the debate.

Booking details, plus a full course outline, are available here.

Aura Satz’s work has been shortlisted for the Samsung Art+ Prize.
Her Oramics: Atlantis Anew, a film about the Oramics Machine made in collaboration with the London Consortium, will be shown at the exhibition.

Out of the Archive: Artists, Images and History

Filipa César, Black Balance (work in progress) 2010 © Filipa César

Friday 18 November 2011, 10.30–17.30
Saturday 19 November 2011, 10.30–17.30

A conference developed in collaboration with the London Consortium.
This conference was originally conceived by the Colonial Film project team, and coincides with the launch of the Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire website.

Drawing on contemporary art practice, this two-day international conference explores the relationship between historical research and artists’ methods and processes when working with recorded images found in archives. Contributors address current debates around the validity of research generated through artistic strategies, how these processes complicate forms of historical narration, as well as how they inform and challenge conventional methods of historical research.

Contributors include: Sven Augustijnen, Frédérique Berthet, Adam Broomberg, Bernadette Buckley, Filipa César, Oliver Chanarin, TJ Demos, Mary Ann Doane, Nanina Guyer, Mark Nash, Colin MacCabe, Naeem Mohaiemen, Laura Mulvey, Michael Renov, Zineb Sedira, Louise Sheedy, Patrik Sjöberg and Chou Yu-Ling.

Tate Modern Starr Auditorium
£30 (£25 concessions), booking required

Programme

For tickets book online
or call 020 7887 8888.

The London Sound Seminar offers an opportunity for research students and faculty in London to explore issues relating to the history and theory of all forms of sound-making and auditory culture.

Sound Objects

12 October – Steve Connor on Tape [4.30–6pm, Rm 112, 43 Gordon Square]

John Hurt in Krapp’s Last Tape
Atom Egoyan, Steenbeckett
Steven Connor, ‘Looping the Loop: Tape-Time in Burroughs and Beckett’

26 October – Aura Satz on the Oramics machine [4.30–6pm, Rm 112, 43 Gordon Square]

9 November – Jonathan Tee on the Public Address System [4.30–6pm, Rm 112, 43 Gordon Square]

7 December – Holly Pester on the Answer Machine [4.30–6pm, Rm 213, 43 Gordon Square] [Note the change in location: this will be held in Steve Connor’s office, Rm 213, 43 Gordon Square]

To subscribe to the London Sound Seminar mailing list: from the email address you wish to subscribe with, send the following command within the body of the message to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk: SUBSCRIBE LONDONSOUNDSEMINAR Firstname Lastname

We will use the list for announcements of meetings and events, and it can be used for discussion too. To send an message to the list, simply email londonsoundseminar@jiscmail.ac.uk

Come along to this month’s Science Museum Lates on Gaming (on 28th September from around 7pm), where the Consortium speaker will be Rob Gallagher.

Science fiction meets fictional science

Many videogames borrow narrative and aesthetic tropes from science fiction. But as a medium that combines representation and simulation, digital games are also capable of supplementing science fiction with ‘fictional science’, of implementing made-up physical laws that promote a reconsideration of our relationship with science and technology.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/events/events_for_adults/Lates.aspx

Maya Deren: 50 Years On
BFI, Oct 4th - Oct 12th 2011

Curated by Elinor Cleghorn; a collaboration between BFI and the London Consortium

Fifty years after the death visionary filmmaker, theorist and proselytiser Maya Deren, the art and influence of one of experimental cinema’s most inspiring and charismatic figures is celebrated and explored. This dedicated programme of screenings and events includes ‘Maya Deren: New Reflections’ (Saturday 8th October) a one-day symposium exploring Deren’s legacy through the lenses of visual art, choreography, anthropology and film theory.

For full programme details and to book tickets please visit the BFI link here

Two events dedicated to reading the matter and metaphors of waste and value, in and through spaces, objects and language.

Rubbish film double-bill

Friday 29th July
6pm - 9pm
Birkbeck College
B20 Main Building
Torrington Square
London, WC1E 7HX

Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine, 2009)
The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000)

Rubbish Symposium

Saturday 30th July
9am-5pm
Birkbeck College
B20 Main Building
Torrington Square
London, WC1E 7HX

Keynote - Professor Steven Connor
Respondent - Professor Esther Leslie

Speakers:
Henderson Downing (Birkbeck) - “No Shit, Sherlock”: Psychogeography and Other Rubbish Theories
Natalie Joelle (Birkbeck) - The Back Art of Things: Gleaning and Picking in Agnes Varda’s The Gleaners and I and Lucy Walker’s Waste Land
Lisa Mullen (Birkbeck) - Undead Toys: When Objects Refuse to be Rubbish
Terri Mullholland (Oxford) and Sian Thomas (Poet) - The Things that Remain: The Abandoned House as Archive of Poetic Memory
Daniel Rourke (Goldsmiths) - On Kipple and Things
Rosemary Shirley (Sussex) - Keeping Britain Tidy: Litter and Anxiety
Jon Tee (Birkbeck) - ‘Sound, Noise… Rubbish? Ballard’s “The Sound-Sweep”, Musique Concrète and the “Music for Magnetic Tape Project”‘
Tony Venezia (Birkbeck) - “There is no real magic” – George A. Romero’s Martin as Rustbowl Fantasy
Will Viney (London Consortium) - ‘Unproductive and Uninhabited’: Wastes of Place and Time
James Wilkes (London Consortium) - Follies, Ruins, and Fossils: Paul Nash’s Swanage Photographs

Chairs: Dr. Brian Dillon (Kent); Zara Dinnen (Birkbeck); Matt Wraith (London Consortium)

The symposium will be followed by a wine reception.

Both events are free.

The London Consortium and the London Film School seek to appoint a Course Director for its recently-launched MA in Film Curating.

The successful applicant will have an understanding both of film programming and of the theory and practice of curating, and will be responsible for coordinating the teaching for the degree and providing support for its 20 students.

The post is a one-year appointment with a salary of £35,000.

Full details of the degree can be found at: http://www.londonconsortium.com/programmes/mafilmcurating.php

Please send a cv and letter of application to The London Consortium, 24 Litchfield Street, London WC2H 9NJ.

Closing date for applications is 19th August 2011.

Herbarium is an anthology of nearly 100 poems written by 56 poets celebrating and exploring the contemporary resonances of medicinal plants and herbs. You are invited to the launch of the anthology at a free event from 7pm on Friday 22nd July in the beautiful setting of the Urban Physic Garden, Southwark.

Friday 22 July
7.00pm – 9.00pm
The Urban Physic Garden
100 Union Street, SE1 0NL

The anthology is edited and contains poems by Consortium students. Copies will be on sale for £5 on the night.

The London Consortium presents:

Anthony Julius, Is There Anything to be Said for Censorship?

July 7, 6:30pm
Tate Britain, Clore Auditorium
Millbank, SW1P 4RG

Anthony Julius is the chairman of the London Consortium and one of the UK’s most prominent litigation lawyers. He was head of the law firm Mischon de Reya’s litigation department for ten years and served on the management board from 1985-1997. As the Firm’s senior solicitor-advocate, he has appeared in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal and acted for many high profile clients. He is renowned for defending Deborah Lipstadt in the David Irving Holocaust denial trial, as well as representing Princess Diana during her divorce. He is now at the forefront of the firm’s work in public advocacy. Anthony was a member of the Faculty of Law of UCL for three years and is now a Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of several major books, including T.S. Eliot: Anti-Semitism and Literary Form, Transgressions: The Offences of Art, and most recently Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England. Anthony is Chairman of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper and Vice-President of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.

This is the final talk in the London Consortium’s summer term Visiting Speakers series. It is free and open to all, but please RSVP: events@londonconsortium.com to secure a place.

The London Consortium Presents:
Esther Leslie: Time and Money

June 24, 6.30 pm
Birkbeck College, room B20
Malet Street, Bloomsbury London WC1E 7HX

Time and money , as the old adage goes, are co-articulated. This paper considers in particular the watch and the clock as they come to the fore in the writings of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin.The significance of inflation in Benjamin’s political and moral economy is one point of investigation, which then mutates into the epoch of stabilsation and New Objectivity, an aesthetic that Benjamin castigated, but also found highly expressive of the state of the times.The paper closes with reflections on depression as screened in Brecht’s 1932.
 
Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck College (University of London) and known for her publications on Walter Benjamin. She is an editor of the journals Radical Philosophy, Revolutionary History and Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory.

This is the third talk in The London Consortium’s ongoing Visiting Speakers Series.

This event is free but please RSVP for attendance: events@londonconsortium.com
 
We hope to see you all there.

The Monster’s Smile
Joan Baixas in Conversation with Aura Satz

<http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/talksdiscussions/23815.htm>

Saturday 18 June 2011, 14.00-16.00
Theatre director, dramatist, poet and painter Joan Baixas talks about the seminal project ‘Mori el Merma’, for which his company La Claca collaborated with Joan Miró. Originally performed to international acclaim in 1978 with grotesque puppets inspired by Miró’s graphic representations of Alfred Jarry’s ‘Ubu Roi’ and painted together with Miró, it was subsequently revived as ‘Merma Never Dies’ for Tate Modern (2006) and has gone through several other incarnations (and incineration) since then. In conversation with artist and writer Aura Satz, they will explore a range of issues, from the political moment of the 1970s (itself one of the key themes in the Miró exhibition) to wider ideas about the use of puppets, props, and art in performance.

During the act, Joan Baixas will perform a short solo painting performance in homage to Joan Miró: The Monster’s Smile.

With support from Institut Ramon Llull

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£9 (£5 concessions), booking recommended

For tickets book online, or call 020 7887 8888.

The London Consortium Presents:
Christopher Turner:
Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex

Thursday, June 16 · 6:30pm - 9:30pm
The Swedenborg Society
20-21 Bloomsbury Way WC1A 2TH
London, United Kingdom

This is the second talk in The London Consortium’s ongoing visiting speakers series.

Christopher Turner is the editor of Icon magazine and an editor at Cabinet. He was in the first cohort of the London Consortium, writing a PhD on the topic of disgust. He also writes for the Guardian, Sunday Telegraph and London Review of Books. His first book, Adventures in the Orgasmatron (HarperCollins), is due out in early August.

This event is Free but
Please RSVP for free attendance: events@londonconsortium.com

Tom McCarthy on Robbe-Grillet: Thursday 9 June, 7:00pm at the Institut Francais, 17 Queensberry Place, London
tickets and information here.

Words on Mondays with Robert Coover: Monday 13 June, 7:00pm at Kings Place, London N1 9AG
Discussion with Robert Coover, John Banville, and Tom McCarthy.
tickets and information here.

Electra presents Dirty Literature Series: Thursday 16 June, 7:00pm at the National Portrait Gallery
Francesco Pedraglio and Tom McCarthy
Tickets and information here.

Calling All Agents: A symposium on the work of Tom McCarthy
Birkbeck College, Univeristy of London, 22-23 July
Calling All Agents: A symposium on the work of Tom McCarthy’ is the first academic symposium on the work of British novelist Tom McCarthy. This event will feature papers on McCarthy’s three novels, Remainder (2005), Men in Space (2007) and C (2010), as well as his role as General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society, and his relationship with the Tintin series. The day will conclude with a reading by and Q&A session with McCarthy.
Registration and information here.

The London Sound Seminar offers an opportunity for research students and faculty in London to explore issues relating to the history and theory of all forms of sound-making and auditory culture.

All meetings are in room 112, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1

Wednesday 1 June 2011 4.30-6.00
Sound Poetry
Bob Cobbing, ‘Some Statements on Sound Poetry’
Roland Barthes, ‘The Grain of the Voice’, in Image-Music-Text (London: Fontana, 1977), pp.179–189*
Henry Chopin, Sound Poetry, especially “Vibrespace” (1963), “Le Soleil est mécanique” (1972) and “Le Rire est Debout” (1969)

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 4.30-6.00
Digital Sound
Aden Evens, Sound Ideas: Music, Machines and Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), Chapter 3 ‘Sound and Digits’, especially ‘The Question Concerning the Digital’ pp. 62-80 and ‘The Grain of the Voice’ pp.114-124
Jonathan Sterne, ‘The Death and Life of Digital Audio‘, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 31 (2006): 338-348.

Wednesday 29 June 2011 4.30-6.00
Walter Ong, The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp.111–138 [first published 1967]
Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), pp.13–19

To subscribe to the London Sound Seminar mailing list:

From the email address you wish to subscribe with, send the following command within the body of the message to listserv@jiscmail.ac.uk: SUBSCRIBE LONDONSOUNDSEMINAR Firstname Lastname

We will use the list for announcements of meetings and events, and it can be used for discussion too. To send an message to the list, simply email londonsoundseminar@jiscmail.ac.uk

The London Consortium presents:
Professor Beatriz Colomina
Towards a New Posthuman Architect

Wednesday June 1st, 7pm
The Royal Institute of British Architects, Lutyens Room
66 Portland Place, W1B 1AD

Air travel was revolutionized in the late1950s with the arrival of commercial jetliners. Le Corbusier saw the collapse of traditional space and time as nothing less than the emergence of a new kind of human. En route to India, in his favorite airplane seat, he notes: “January 5, 1960. I am settled in my seat by now acquired number 5, -alone, admirable one-man seat, total comfort. In fifty years we have become a new animal on the planet.” This posthuman is an animal that flies; the airline network is its “efficient nervous system,” its web covering the globe. The hyper-mobile architect is a symptom of a globalized society in which humanity will be necessarily transformed.

Beatriz Colomina is Professor of Architecture and Founding Director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University. She is the author of Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (MIT Press, 1994), Sexuality and Space (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992), and Domesticity at War (ACTAR and MIT Press, 2007). Recently she curated with a team of Ph.D. students from Princeton the exhibition “Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X.”  The catalogue of the exhibition, co-edited with Craig Buckley, has just been published by ACTAR. Her next research project is “X-Ray Architecture: Illness as Metaphor.”
This is the inaugural talk in the London Consortium’s ongoing visiting speakers series.
 

Please RSVP for free attendance: info@londonconsortium.com
£5 on the door, pending availability, for unconfirmed guests.

Screening of Under the Cranes (2011), directed by Emma-Louise Williams, assistant director, Consortium alumnus Walter Stabb.

Sat 30th April at 1.30pm at the Rio Cinema, Hackney (Part of the the East London Film Festival) .

Using the script of Dalston poet Michael Rosen’s documentary play Hackney Streets, Under the Cranes is a meditation on place as central to our experience of history. Shot on location in Hackney and intercut with rare archive footage, its cast of characters includes Shakespeare, Anna Sewell, Anna Barbauld, a Jamaican builder, a Bangladeshi restaurant owner and the Jewish 43 Group taking on Oswald Mosley. Streets, parks, cemeteries and markets, both past and present, create ‘layers of lives’ that raise questions about the process of ‘regeneration’; and even while David Cameron claims that “multiculturalism has failed”, this film celebrates how “the world comes to Hackney”.

Information about tickets and festival programme here. Film reviews and information here.